2:16 — Keep using your wiki for various purposes (not just a one-time event)

2:45 — Gentle onboarding: How to help new users get used to your wiki

3:20 — Weave wikis into workflow

4:16 — Other tactics to drive adoption of your wiki (include your wiki in your signature, “This should be on our PBwiki” stickers)

5:00 — Create editing cycles so users don’t hit a brick wall

Need more resources? The best place to learn more about driving adoption is our Driving Adoption wiki, which includes detailed tips and tricks, presentations, and case studies for integrating PBwiki into your organization.

Jason Samuelian is a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho who introduced wikis to volunteers throughout the nine current Southern Africa countries that have Peace Corps volunteers. You can check out his public wiki here. Here is Jason’s case study, in his own words.

So, why did you need a wiki?
You see what we are trying to do is build a space on the internet where the volunteers can share information and ideas on how to further the development projects in their countries. We are doing this outside the confines of Peace Corps Washington and therefore it is on our measly salaries to get this thing off and running.

How are you using your PBwiki?
We are using PBwiki to provide resources for Peace Corps volunteers in the Southern African region. Such as the sharing of project ideas, resources, recipes, weather, experiences we have faced, etc. The main purpose behind the wiki though is too make volunteers more successful in their service by giving the easy access to volunteer ideas and information that has already been field tested by their predecessors.

How has using a wiki changed the work you do for the Peace Corps?
The Peace Corps does give us a significant amount of initial training and they provide computers for us to work on throughout our service. The common practice though by most volunteers has been to make say a lesson plan or an outline of how to run a sports camp to raise awareness to HIV/AIDS.

However the two components have never been brought together. What we thought would be helpful was to make this information available to people before the even come to the country. This way we could get the new volunteers thinking about what they might want to try and give them ideas after they have gotten to their site and maybe been discouraged by a failed project or idea.

:35 – How to get non-technical people involved
1:56 – Three ways Seesmic uses their business wiki
2:46 – Who used the wiki immediately (hint: no one) and how to get people on board
3:22 – How to explain to non-technical people why and how to use a wiki.

“It’s made my job so much easier. I can look at one site, where ever I am and I know what’s going on”